


Fractals

by inlovewithnight



Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-03-22
Updated: 2006-03-22
Packaged: 2017-10-15 15:05:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/162033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inlovewithnight/pseuds/inlovewithnight





	Fractals

A girl walks in a field. Blades of grass bend under her feet. She picks a flower, she startles a bee, a butterfly flaps its wings.

On the other side of the world, it rains.

They call the theory _chaos_ , but there is order in it, patterns under patterns growing out of the heat in the center of the world, in the center of her chest, the beating heart that sends the numbers flowing under her skin.

She is a girl in pieces, a girl in patterns, repeating small and large, growing out of themselves and each other. All the same, mountains and grains of sand, carrying the seeds of the other in their hearts. Goddess and girl-child, Amazon and Madonna and whore, spiraling outward from the center and in again.

Find the common in the great and small, and you will find her name.  
***  
I. The Girl Who Opened Doors  
The shape is circle, energy holding itself, no corners imposed upon its endless curving flow.

The circles repeat around her, echo in the air. She steps through blinding light and her garments fall to rags, her theorems fall to incantations, her body falls to earth that is not Earth.

Circles turn and look the same and are never the same portal twice. Always they turn twice, though, there and back again—always but once, when death went through the door, when the pattern was broken on her behalf, hands that loved snapping a neck with good intentions.

But otherwise the circles turn in pairs, there and back, there and back. A baby went away and a wild thing returned, but they were the same under the skin, the same if you ran them through. (No one did, no one could, beloved son, protective father, magic in his veins.)

Angel went away and returned with the secret name of God, of Power (that Was), a kiss of air to break the spell of sweetest dreams and wake the world.

And in the end, circles would open at her body’s will, though her soul and mind were gone, and she walked away and back at will among the worlds.

II. Sealed With A Kiss  
The shape is twinned, one and then another, joined at points.

Open mouth and closed eyes and chaos spins off in ordered forms. It makes a road to what she might call _tragedy_ and an outside eye might name _a damn good show._

First kiss in the pattern was secret, a late hour in the lab, mentor’s hands on student skin, taste of chalk dust and knowledge he promised to share. The kiss was a price, to hold her off, hold her back, hold her tongue, but she didn’t pay and so she paid, with her freedom and her mind and five years gone in flashes.

Second kiss a handsome prince, in high-tops and jeans. They were friends first and lovers after and happy for a little while, until a circle turned (only once) and her stain was on his hands.

Third a God, a pledge of love and peace she quickly breaks, the promise running through her fingers in blood and water. Fourth a Champion, a mask to hide them from their enemies, an extra layer of shadow to veil them before they run. Both led to the same end, sorrow and rage and ashes.

Fifth inside the lion’s den, last love found too late. Palm to palm is holy palmer’s kiss, and she could count on one hand the times they had even that before she left him.

III. Ghost In The Machine  
Third shape is the overlap, one buried beneath the other. She isn’t, she is unmade, the woman undone by agents larger than herself.

The collar heavy around her neck, breathing through her skin, reaching in to read her thoughts and find the ones that wrote the other way. Stinging and biting and forcing her to think in lines, until she smothered it to silence.

Once the agents were small, gray and ugly and smaller than her hand, craving seventy percent of her body as the rest of her craved air, speaking with her voice and bringing word from beyond the veil, until what her mama had called _devil’s drink_ burned them out again.

Another time she was overlaid by herself, a ghost of herself, a ghost of Fred-that-was. Younger and unknowing and incomplete, not-self anymore, pushing aside the memories of the body for one last walk in the sun.

God filled her with peace and love and the smell of jasmine, until her hands were stained again and gave her eyes to see and the sorrow of knowing her own mind.

Once the agent was boundless, larger than the world, forced into a shell by the dreams of a fool and the machinations of the lions (not lions, wolf and hart and ram).

IV. Marginalia  
Fourth shape is shape unseen, negative space, present around the edges of what is. Fourth shape bears witness and stands inacting.

Handsome man rides to face the monsters and she watches, stands on the sideline hiding her hands beneath her rags. Her hair falls tangled to shield her eyes, and no one looks, no one sees.

They take her out to sing and it turns to war, secrets bursting from under the skin out into light, Charles forced to make a choice and everyone speaks but her. She is shielded, she bears witness, she sees and sees and sees.

The Destroyer the Tro-Klon the miracle child the child who cannot be is born in an alley, and she bears witness, she sees. She kneels over him as a mother might, while his father weeps and the rain washes his mother away.

The sun hides its face and evil walks the earth with feet of stone and she watches. She tends the cave (home and hearth and Hyperion) while the others go out and back again, bruised and bleeding and jagged at the edges.

And then they don’t go out, they stay in the den with the lions (and the wolves the harts the rams) and she watches that, too, doing only five impossible things before coffee (no breakfast in the lab) and wishing for the sixth, watching watching as evil and good blur into gilt and gray.  
***  
A girl in pieces, a girl in patterns. Trace the beginning to the end and find yourself at the beginning again, moving in twinned circles that overlap and fade into negative space. The same story in an hour as in a year, or five years, or forever. Scale is irrelevant, the heart of it’s the same.

Order out of chaos, says the theory. Out of what was around her, a girl.  



End file.
